Lawrence County has made a tremendous sacrifice over the years to keep America free and perhaps nowhere is this sacrifice more obvious than in its cemeteries.

One area resting place will soon have a little more land available for burying veterans. Workers at Woodland Cemetery are removing a gravel roadway that cut through the soldiers’ section of the burial park. The land is being filled in and will eventually be used for gravesites.

“It seems like we are burying a lot more veterans these days,” explained Mallory Morgan, whose husband, Lee is cemetery caretaker. “This will give more soldiers a chance to be buried here.”

Morgan said Woodland officials had initially planned to repair the road but the estimates were a bit costly. Lawrence County Veterans Services Officer Jack Welz approached Lee Morgan and cemetery trustee Bobby Ackerman about converting the roadway into grave space.

“That was the only gravel road in the whole cemetery and no one could tell me why that was,” Ackerman said. “We’ll have two parking spaces where the road went through. We’re limited on grave space. It’s going fast.”

Ackerman said the roughly 10-feet-wide, 150 feet long gravel strip will yield probably 300 new grave spaces.

Work began approximately a month ago, Morgan said. Right now workers are filling in the footprint of the road with fill dirt from others graves as they are opened. Ackerman said the grave sites may be ready within six months.